Cold War Comfort Amid Shadowy Insecurity

The comforting part of the craziness of the last week is that the world seems finally to have slipped back into some of the certitudes of the Cold War years.
Post 9/11, our fears emanating from shadowy non-state actors have left us additionally confounded. There’s no way of knowing for sure whether our leaders are projecting the terrorist threat to protect us or their own jobs? A return to more definitive issues of life and death can only be reassuring.
In waging war on two fronts, Israel has proved that conventional notions of security remain at the forefront for those who care. With the Israelis ready to widen the war, the Middle East is in the throes of the kind of regional conflagration that erupted once a decade between the 1940s and 1970s. With Egypt and Jordan formally at peace with the Jewish state, the Hamases and Hezbollahs weren’t inclusive enough among their own constituents to create anything akin to the multi-state combustion of the past.
Unlike past wars, when Iran’s monarchy actually served as a pillar of stability, Teheran is on the side of Hezbollah, the ayatollahs’ clients. Under President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran’s words carry great commercial value, too. Every time he threatens to nuke Israel, oil prices shoot up several dollars. But, hey, Ahmadinejad is an elected president. He knows where rhetoric should end and reality must prevail. Deep inside, he probably worries that Israel might extend its right to self-defense all the way to extinguishing Iran’s nuclear facilities.
Russian President Vladimir Putin, buoyed by rising oil prices, has brought his country firmly into that exclusive international club called the G8. His desire to focus the St. Petersburg summit squarely on energy security and infectious diseases may have been upset by the convulsions in the Middle East. But Putin’s ebullience remains undiminished.
While US President George W. Bush lies wounded in his final years in power, Putin is toying with the idea of changing the constitution to extend his tenure in the Kremlin. Now that Putin believes his dog is better than Bush’s, he’s salivating to make his mark on international peace and security. By threatening to veto any U.N. Security Council resolution against North Korea’s missile development program under Chapter VII, Moscow has revived the patron-client relationship that thrived under the communist gerontocracy. (In a pre-summit analysis, one Washington Post columnist anointed Putin as the head of the globe’s anti-democracy bloc.)
The real shift in international equations is underscored by China, whose abstention on key Security Council resolutions Washington and the wider West had come to count on in recent years. Beijing joined Moscow in opposing a Chapter VII resolution on North Korea. The unanimous resolution the Security Council finally adopted has none of the teeth to leave the kind of bite the Bush administration wants on Kim Jong-il’s bottom.
For all the reassurance a return to the verities of the Cold War offers, there is a scary part. Al Qaeda and its cohorts desire precisely this does of complacency in order to plot something big.